Poster: A snowHead
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Wayne, you're probably getting the message that if you want a professional job get a professional to do it. Much as you might like playing with code it is not your core business. Better to spend the time earning the money to pay the designer.
You could offer the tender for the work on s rather than a competition?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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The 'live' version is much improved on that on 'test' link at the start of the thread.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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OK then - I fully understand I am cr*p at web design - I am OK with the codes but it's the looking good stuff I'm just not too good at (at all)
So if there are any site designers reading this you may want to have a look at this
http://social.expression.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/web/thread/e85a149b-f448-4652-aeef-b272a086071f
The reason I have placed it on that forum as that I answer question from microsoft regarding VBA, SQL, etc, on other MS sites - no pay but loads of freebees.
So there you go, if you're looking for some work, have a read.
Oh, if you get the job, be prepared for SH's to comment on your work
You can just PM if you want rather than using that email address
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My two cents here Wayne...
I would steer clear of Microsoft technologies when looking for a website to be developed. I'm a little confused as to why you've gravitated towards it. If you want to get your site to the 21st Century, don't use shitty programs like expression web and Access databases.
I would suggest you find a designer who knows either Ruby on Rails or jQuery very well, and use MySQL as the database. Popular, continuously updated open source software is the way forward here. Alternatively, go down the content management system route; Joomla, WordPress, etc. There are very nice looking templates out there that you could implement, or could get someone to sort out for you, and you could easily maintain it.
And remember to always know how you will maintain it, and what you will do when something breaks when looking for a designer.
As for the site, please don't use inline CSS or tables
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Timmaah wrote: |
Alternatively, go down the content management system route; Joomla, WordPress, etc.
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^ This
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Timmaah, exactly. WordPress with some additional database work would make a lot of sense.
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I've been using Modx for this type of thing.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Wayne, I'm a bit confused as you came on here to get critique but seem a little peeved that you got some
You speak about admin costs.. all the solutions I suggested are free. They're open source. There is no admin costs, what's even better is that there's a huge community out there who have gone through all the issues you will encounter and who have documented how to get around it. Proprietary software is a silly thing to use in web development (except for Photoshop but even then there are alternatives).
I love SQL. It's a great logical language.
To be honest, the site that you have up at the moment is alright, the one you linked to is not. I'm merely giving you comments by the way so don't take this the wrong way!
There will be a time though when you need to update the website. Especially the booking part, that is the worst part in my opinion. I recently booked a bunch of lodges for my next holiday, and anyone where I was unable to view/book online I just didn't bother with. The fact that you don't have a booking form to get emailed is also a bit odd. Why should I make the extra effort to pay them money if they can't be bothered to get their website up to speed? Why is the hotel availability an extra click away if I can't book online? Why isn't it on the same page?
I would suggest you look at your website not as a business owner but as a user who has got 5-10 tabs of different chalets open, why should they choose yours? Is your website convenient and easy to use? Can they easily book on? How do they know the availability is up to date if everything on the page is just dynamic?
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Timmaah wrote: |
Wayne, I'm a bit confused as you came on here to get critique but seem a little peeved that you got some |
Sorry if I came over like that, I didn't mean to. I honestly do want people to tell me what they think - even if they thing what I've done is cr*p .
I am in 2 "industries" that are probably the only ones left that have two things that used to be common.
I run the (by far) the largest outdoor pursuits company in the UK - eg. 60,000 (yep sixty thousand) people have taken part in our Fort William trips in the last 20 years. 25,000 people have used been on our climbing courses - did I mention that we are the only private outdoor pursuits company to actually own the crags they use for courses, etc, etc.
So what has this to do with the new ski website ? - simple, it means that we are not very PC. Mountaineering in the last non PC industry left. It stems from the saying "you got yourself up here, so you get yourself off". ie. It wasn’t the teacher’s fault or your parents, or society’s, or, etc, etc, you are responsible so sort it out.
I don't get offend by much.
Next I teach physics. If one days I say that X=Y, but someone tells me that it can't as X+Y=Z and Z=X then I know I was wrong as you have proved it, I don't upset as I was wrong I just absorb the new realities (of the value of XY & Z) and carry on.
What I was pointing (obviously badly) is that we use Microsoft integrated systems, and that will not change just because we want a new web site. The new site MUST integrate with the rest of the admin set-up. I "may" use SQL server as the backend data holder, but I would rather use an access table, for the simply reason is that I'm a bit thick and can't be bothered learning anything else.
The good news is that I have spoken to quite a few people today who are interested in creating all or parts of a website for us - that should be better than my feeble attempts .
Last edited by So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much on Mon 5-11-12 18:31; edited 1 time in total
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You know it makes sense.
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Good luck, thanks for clearing it up
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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Sorry, I should've been more specific! I meant don't use tables to set the layout of your page. Using tables to show data is perfectly fine of course. Before CSS got big, people placed everything in a multitude of tables to design the layout.
Inline CSS is just a bad practise. Put all your CSS in external files, link to it in the <head></head> part of the site. This greatly reduces code duplication,makes editing the page a lot simpler, improves maintainability, and marginally makes page load time quicker.
So rather than writing inline CSS for 5 row items, you could make a CSS class: .spaghetti
and then just do <tag> rather than <tag> and have to re-edit the next 5 lines.
Now on re-reading I see the question was just on tables
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Not a fan of the 2/4 border thing but looks good considering its in house and you're new to it all! Better than the last one for sure.
I would have a look at changing the top white part. Make the font different? Links a bit more interesting? Maybe add a little image next to them that represents it. And add an extra line in the Madonna di... so they're both even. An easy way to do this is to insert space by using comments which the forum strips out.. but just typical HTML comments.
Which will show nothing to the user but make an extra line, alternatively a <br> might do it as well.
Some pictures in the resort info (I know you mentioned this )would be nice with maybe larger headings? Again, the text font looks a bit too default.
The hotel details page have text on background rather than on white, I prefer this style but I would stick with one for the whole site, whichever way you decide. On the hotel details page, would be nice if the thumbnails were clickable to go to larger images. Check out things like lightbox for this.[/code]
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Masque wrote: |
Wayne, Just a quicky(sic), The 'button' looking headers above the pictures on the home page need to link to the appropriate pages. It's instinctive today to click on things that look as though they should be buttons and frustrating when they aren't. |
You know what – I love advice that’s actually good; and it's even better when it's free.
I didn’t realised they looked like buttons, but you’re right they do. I just thought they were a nice bit of CSS
The looky-likey buttons have been change to hyperlinks
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Wayne wrote: |
You know what – I love advice that’s actually good; and it's even better when it's free. |
Booger . . . well that's 1/2 a transfer earned
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Wayne, There are some here for whom Wigan and pork pies are synonymous with the words "stresser incident" & "inappropriate behavious"
And you lost some at "free pork pie dinner"
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This is much better than the other one.
I'm viewing it on iPad - amd one tng I would say is that your two resort boxes - the blue of the hyperlink blends in to the blue of the box, so it's quite difficult to read the resort names.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Server Error
404 - File or directory not found.
The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
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1969jma wrote: |
Server Error |
Works for me.
Are you putting in the correct URL.
It "should" work
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